


Shadows

by Mertiya



Category: Fright Night (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Vincent.  Aftermath.  Nightmares.  But even nightmares come to an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Rated M for profanity, some violence and sexual content.

**Shadows**

            Peter Vincent was baking in the sunlight.  He was crusted in sweat and filth and grime and a lot of shit that he really didn’t want to think about.  He really didn’t want to think about anything.  He was dead tired— _shudder why would you even fucking think that expression?—_ a tiredness that lay heavy on his bones, too heavy for him even to fucking move, but he couldn’t sleep.

            It had taken him five fucking hours just to be able to close his eyes.

            He was lying outside on an old deck chair, on the balcony he’d taken one look at briefly the day he’d purchased the apartment and never bothered to set foot on again.  Thank fucking _god_ this thing existed.  He envied those kids, who had been fucking like rabbits when he left and sleeping side-by-side when he got back.  How the hell _could_ they sleep?  He’d been outside in the bright sunlight, baking for hours and hours and hours, no sunscreen of course.  Skin cancer sounded _good_ right about now.

            But yeah, at least his eyes were shut now, and all he could see on his closed lids was the bright orange of his own bloo—of his own capillaries.  Instead of what he’d been seeing every other time he’d closed his eyes—darkness, flashing fangs, faces brutally cracked with grins that had _too many fucking teeth_.  The vampire burning to ash, the cruel, inhuman expression suddenly replaced with confusion and then acceptance, peace.  That last should have been comforting, right?  But all he could think was, _You bastard, you fucker, you killed my parents, and that’s not how they looked when they died._

            Oh shit, he was thinking again, he was thinking again.  He forced his heavy limbs to move, to sit up, and his shaking hand reached for his flask.  He gulped the stinging liquid down, and groaned, seating the flask on his side again, his head drooping forward between his hands.  His eyes were open again, and he was looking at his hands.  They hurt, speckled with gray dirt and stitched across with tooth-marks, the flesh around the abrasions red and puffy.  He should really take a shower.  He needed to get rid of it, get rid of the feelings of caked sweat and earth and sticky blood that still clung to him like a miasma, but he couldn’t.  Ginger’s stuff would be in the shower.

            They’d just been fuckbuddies, right?  She was his assistant, for Christ’s sake.  Yeah, that’s what he’d told himself, and they’d been arguing, arguing a lot lately, because of his fucking nightmares.  Hell, though, he loved a good argument, and before the nightmares an argument between the two of them had just meant some really extra good makeup sex.  But no, last few weeks, nightmares getting worse.  He couldn’t sleep, which meant she couldn’t sleep.  He was even more irritable than usual, and their sex life had gone to hell in a fucking handbasket.

            He didn’t _care_ about her, he told himself again, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands.  It would get to anyone, right, seeing the bloody corpse of someone you’d fucked—for months, not at once, bloody obviously _shit fuck leave that swear word out of my vocabulary_ —no, for longer, their one-year was coming up, wasn’t it?  Well, not anymore.

            Oh fuck no he was back there again, back in the saferoom, heart pounding so heavy he could feel it and hear it and nothing else, in front of him a twitching, grotesque, bloody _arm_ , and it was still moving _oh god it was moving_ , and what if vampires were like _worms_ , you cut off one bit and they _grow a new body_?  Okay, it didn’t _look_ like it was going to grow but _fuck_ it was vampires again, he thought he’d gotten _away_ from vampires.  Las Vegas.  For fuck’s sake, that was supposed to be a normal place, right?  And then his eyes went from the sickening bit of vampire on the ground up to the security cam, and there she was, lying there, her dressing gown open, her legs spread apart obscenely.  In the dim blue light, her blood looked black.  In his haste to get away, he hadn’t even thought about her.

            He sat up with a gasp, and his flask went bouncing away to land dribbling clear liquid on the ground yards away.  Oh fuck no, he couldn’t be this tired yet.  Tired enough to nod off in the middle of the day; for god’s sake, he’d only gone without sleep for one night!  Or was it two—had he slept at all the night before?  Or had he just tossed and turned beside her, beside Ginger’s living form until she yelled at him to get up and leave her alone, and he had?  In any case, surely he wasn’t tired enough that he was hallucinating, nodding off in the middle of the day to relive the nightmares inside his head?  Next thing he knew he’d be

            _Crouching in a closet, breath so very very loud in his own ears, wanting to scream and cry and claw his eyes out, but he couldn’t make a sound, because the bad man was there.  The bad man.  Mummy let the bad man in, and now she looked at him like she wasn’t Mummy anymore.  Her eyes were looking right at him, over the bad man’s shoulder, but they were dead, glassy eyes, and there was blood trickling down over her fingers._

 _Then there was the screaming nonsensical roar of Daddy’s voice and the gun that went off again and again but the bad man dropped Mummy and just walked toward Daddy and laughed.  And laughed and laughed and then he took Daddy and wrenched his head back and why couldn’t he look away please make him look away but he couldn’t and there was blood and Mummy was on the floor and Daddy was on the floor and the bad man looked up, and he was looking_ right at him _but no he couldn’t have seen him, because he had turned and he was leaving_

            “FUCK!” Peter roared, sitting up again with a sob.  He cannoned into something soft and warm, which moved hurriedly away.

            “Jesus Christ, Pete,” Ginger’s unmistakable voice said.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

            “Gin—Ginger—,” he gulped, staring at her, at her long brown legs and her wavy, dark hair and her beautiful, beautiful unmarked throat and living eyes.  “Oh, fuck, oh God, Ginger!”  He stumbled upright, and she took half a step back as if she was expecting him to hit her, and then her eyes widened.

            “Oh _dios mio_ ,” she said softly.  “Pete…”

            He didn’t care what she’d seen, he didn’t care about anything, all he cared about was that she was _there_ , she was _alive_ , and he crossed the space between them and put his arms around her, and just held her there, just like that, just in his arms, her warmth and her heart beating fast by his chest.  “I thought you were dead,” he said hoarsely, and he pulled her back to arms’ length.

            “Your fucking nightmares are contagious,” she said, but the bite wasn’t in her voice.  She put a hand to her head.  “Dreamed I was a vampire.”

            He kissed her then, long and hard and warm, the moan vibrating through his throat desperately.  His hands were in her hair, soft and warm, then on her shoulders, her back, moving back into her hair as if they were goddamn pigeons coming home to roost.  She responded with a sigh, pulling him downward onto the crappy deck-chair.  His hands were moving onto her thighs when her hands brushed down across the wounds on his chest, and he gave a pained yell, muffled by her mouth.  She put her hands on his shoulders and stopped him.

            “Fucking hell, Pete,” she gasped.  “What happened to your chest?  You look like someone _chewed_ on you.”

            He rocked backward onto his heels.  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said limply.  “Listen, Ging—I’m sorry.”

            Her eyebrows went up.  “You’re sorry?” she snapped.  “You’re _sorry_?”

            “Er, yeah?”

            She slapped him, hard, across the mouth, and he winced.  “Do you have any fucking idea how worried I have been about you?”

            “I—what?”

            “Okay, yeah, we argue,” she snapped, her face turning into a pout.  “My mama always said it’s good for a man and a woman to argue.  But you’ve been having these nightmares and you never listen when I say maybe you should talk to someone or something, and you have been _distant_ , Peter.  There is a look in your eyes like you are not here.”  She squinted at him.  “It’s gone, now,” she said quietly.  Then she looked at the wounds on his chest, tracing her fingers thoughtfully along them.

            “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” she said.  “Dios mio.”

            “Ah, well…” 

            “Whatever.  You—douchebag—come with me.  You need a shower.  You stink.”

            He started to laugh.  It seemed like years since he’d laughed.

            “This is not a laughing matter, Mister!  I am not having sex with someone who smells like a pig!”

            “Okay, okay, I get it.”  He let her drag him to his feet and back into the apartment, with just a single shudder as she started to close the balcony door.  “Don’t—close the drapes,” he swallowed.

            “Of course not!  Who’s the one who’s always saying this apartment could use more light, Mister Great Illusionist?  Master of the Dark?  Men!”  She forced him into the bathroom.  “Strip.  Now.”

            “Yes ma’am.”  She turned all the lights on as he got achingly out of his clothes.  In several places, they had stuck to congealing blood, and he kept up a steady stream of expletives as more and more skin peeled off with the clothes.  “Fuck,” he moaned.  Steam began to billow up as Ginger turned on the taps.  “That is _far_ too hot!” he protested as she stepped back.  “I am _not_ getting in there!  You are not _getting_  me in there!”

            “What are you, a wimp?  Not macho enough?”  She stepped out of her robe and pulled off her bra and panties, then slid under the running water with a little squeal.  “Still not interested?”

            “You just made it hotter,” he protested feebly, but he was already moving to join her.  He swore again as the water hit his bruised body.

            “You stand,” Ginger said.  “I scrub.”

            “Oh _noooo_ ,” he howled.  “You are _merciless_!”

            “Damn straight,” she said approvingly.  She produced a large sponge from somewhere and began to soap him down.  Pain lanced through all the abrasions, and he moaned and gritted his teeth. He glanced down, and his stomach gave an unpleasant flip-flop to see that the water was running rusty-red

            “God _damn_ it, Ginger!”

            “You are going to take this like a man!”

            “Seriously?”

            She laughed, and he realized he hadn’t heard her laugh in too long either.  Her arms went around him, stroking down the bruised and puckered skin of his chest. .

            “Did you get the nightmares, _mi héroe_?” she whispered, and he was suddenly much less interested in the frankly wonderful feeling of the hot shower suffusing his bones.  A strangled noise came out of his throat, and she tapped her fingers on his side.

            “Yeah, got ’em,” he managed.  “Killed ’em dead—ah _god_.”  Her fingers had wandered lower, and she brushed her lips against his shoulder blade. 

            “You interested?” Ginger murmured in his ear.

            He made a _ghhhnngh_ sort of noise.

            She paused.  “There’s just one thing,” she said in a thoughtful sort of voice.

            “Wha-at?” he managed to gulp.  Her fingers had not moved.

            “Why are there two naked kids sleeping in the living room?”

            “Tell you later,” he responded with the last coherent utterance he was able to make for some time.

**Author's Note:**

> Watching Fright Night I was rather struck by the scene where Peter Vincent reacts to seeing Ginger's corpse, so I wondered if maybe they did have a functional relationship after all. Thus was this ficlet born.


End file.
